The Forgotten Feminist of Kansas, 7

The Papers of Clarina I. H. Nichols, 1854-1885

Edited by JOSEPH G. GAMBONE

Autumn, 1974 (Vol. 40, No. 3), pages 410 to 459
Transcribed and composed in HTML by Barbara J. Scott;
edited by Name withheld upon request;
digitized with permission of the Kansas State Historical Society.
NOTE: The numbers in brackets are links to endnotes for this text.

This is a family birthday, and the little ones have gathered a beautiful boquet of red, white, purple and yellow wild flowers -- suggestive of early summer in Kansas, of mid-winter in California -- to "grace the festive board."

I wrote you last of the early harvest time, of life in the dry season, when grass was standing hay, and the soil, except in cultivated fields, hard as brick. Now we are in the midst of the wet season, the lamb season, the chicken season, the season for picket (fence) driving, for plowing, sowing, planting -- anything but teaming or long journeys on wheels. You may go fishing, for the salmon in crowds, are rushing up all the streams, even straying into such as go dry in the dry season -- and you may find them delicious, either fresh, or pickled or smoked.

In October, November or December, when you could be pretty sure of a few days of fair weather, for camping out, you might have made from five to twenty dollars per day, hunting bear and deer, if you are "a good shot." A few hours' ride would take you to their favorite haunts in the mountains. But now that the weather is more "catching," you would do well to be content with hunting squirrels, rabbits, (hare) ducks and quail, coming in at night-fall with a week's supply of fresh meat.

If you have sheep you would do well to look after the lambs just now; the weak, the lost and the disowned, of a large flock, making no trifling percentage to be placed to the account of profit or loss. The grain fields are green with the promise of golden sheaves in their season. The pastures are green, the butter is golden, and fifty cents a pound. The winter has been unusually cold. Still the mercury has not fallen below seventeen degrees above zero. There has been no mid-day when open doors and windows were not agreeable, and no night when dressing and undressing in a fireless room was uncomfortable.

As a family, we have entirely escaped colds and coughs -- the fast winter since '63 that I have not suffered more or less from a bronchial affection.

I am told it has been several years since a fall of snow in this valley. Sometimes the rain in the valley means snow on the mountains, and one day last week the sun found the valley robed in a beautiful overdress of white Valenciennes, tete a tete with the foot hills. It was a "dissolving view," most emphatically.

Perhaps a brief statement of the season's demands in farm work, in the order custom, will interest many of your readers, while it answers the inquiries of others. Life in California is so unlike life "in the States" -- as Californians designate the eastern sections of the U. S. -- that I despair of conveying correct impressions. However, while I cannot hope to excel my predecessors in describing, my readers may excel me in the power of realizing descriptions of this unique country. Times, seasons and conditions are so at variance with the preconceived ideas and experiences of dwellers "in the States," that what to do and when to do it, are questions of "stunning" import. And when you have ascertained what to do and when to do it and fancy your head quite "level," the where and how, will very likely trip up all your calculations.

Old settlers for neighbors are inestimable blessings. I can understand now how it was that the first agricultural efforts of eastern immigrants turned out so adversely for the reputation of California as an agricultural State.

The first rain that marked the setting in of the rainy season fell early in October. -- From that time till the last week in December we had rain just often enough and in quantity to keep the soil in condition for plowing and seeding. After the first rain, which held on twelve hours, the plows and harrows were put to their work. First in order the summer fallow -- a prominent feature of California agriculture -- was harrowed, then seeded and harrowed again or bushed. Also the stubble ground, which is designed for a volunteer crop of grain or hay, is harrowed to cover the fallen seed of the previous crop. This of course must be done before the seed has sprouted and takes precedence of sowing or plowing that would interfere with the desired result. From the first rainfall that softens the soil sufficiently till the dry season stays proceedings, plow, harrow and cultivator are kept vigorously to the work. The heavier or more continuous rains of mid-winter interfere so often and so much with these processes that no time is suffered to run to waste that can be made available in putting in the crops.

Wheat is the first sowed -- often harrowed in on the mellow corn ground before the first rain, to gain time -- then barley and oats, which may be put in as late as the first of April. There is no "winter grain," in eastern parlance, none of the grains being subjected to a winter freeze, the heat of the day dissipating the frost of the night, and keeping the grain growing, though very slowly. When all the small grains are sowed, the corn ground is plowed -- usually in time to make a second plowing in order for planting. Corn is planted no earlier than in Kansas, on account of late frosts. From the middle of April to the middle of May, corn, pumpkins and beans are planted. The cool nights make a longer season necessary for the perfecting of corn: planted late as the first of June it seldom ripens before frost. The only variety planted is the yellow dent -- eaten by man and beast, but being less palatable than the white corn for bread, the beast gets the most of it.

There is one notable exception to the above routine, in the condition of the soil. -- Your corn ground may be in fine condition for a first plowing while your ground for wheat, barley or oats may be too wet. The field fit to be plowed, of course, takes precedence of those unfit. Last winter was so rainy that much of the plowing had to be done when the soil was too wet, and the crop was less. The present is regarded as a very promising season. Grass is the present question with California farmers -- grass that will endure the dry season and grow from the root. All the native grasses, except a sparsely scattered bunch grass, are annuals. Each season's product comes from the fallen seed of the preceding crop. Close feeding the year round, of course destroys the pasturage; and even moderate feeding, when the seed is maturing, gradually wears it out.

The old settlers tell us, that when they came here, these foot hills and valleys were covered with wild oats (black) and clover -- of which there are several varieties -- from knee to waist high. Old Spanish grants prevented titles, and Spanish cattle swarmed in the hills and valleys, destroying the ranges before the titles were settled, and farms fenced in. The wild oat still flourishes, to some extent, in the hill pastures, but the principal feel of the Valley pastures is the bunch grass, with rosin weed, clover and numberless flowering plants and weeds.

The farmers are beginning to seed with Alfalfa (Chile clover) and Mesquite, a Texas grass, which have the reputation of yielding abundant hay crops, and feed the year round. Fifteen to twenty-five sheep can be kept on one acre of Alfalfa, as proved by California farmers. One hundred acres of this grass, in another county, keeps 2,000 sheep and yields a net income of $25 per acre. It is divided, and the sheep feed on alternate sections. Three crops, of 3 to 5 tons per acre, are cut for hay. It thrives well on any ground that grows crops without irrigation, if not too wet. Timothy is an annual here; it dies out at the root with the dry season. -- Wheat, barley and oats, cut in the milk, are used for hay, which -- baled -- sells at from $10 to $20 per ton in this valley -- the higher price in spring.

I hear of but two varieties of potatoes -- late potatoes are not grown in the dry sections -- the old pink-eye and kidney, and they are planted between the middle of Feb. and middle of March -- the earlier the better time. Gardening commences with the hardiest vegetables, about the same time, tender varieties waiting till April -- later efforts in the gardening line generally prove unsatisfactory.

The earlier trees and cuttings are planted, after the wet season has fairly set in, the surer your success, and with less trouble.

Sheep are sheared spring and fall, each clip full weight, the spring clip bearing a better price from its superior condition.

The hogs generally patronized are black, the white varieties being rejected on account of disease, and mange, which they say takes possession of even a white ear on a black hog. The chesters have been tried, they tell me, and failed ignominiously. A neighbor has what he bought for a Chester white, its ears stand up like a mule's; other marks of breed to correspond. Healthy livers and the utter absence of intestinal and kidney worms has quite overcome my dislike of the black variety of porkers.

The late apples are less juicy and mellow than in Kansas. Most of them require to be cooked, like dried apples, for pies. Winter varieties of the east are early fall apples. -- The R[hode] Island greening, one of the best in this locality, is fully ripe in October, and fine for eating or cooking.

The soil is a sandy loam mixed with clay, and "adobe"; no mixture of vegetable mould as in Kansas. Such beautiful slopes for orchards -- we thought. But no! grapes thrive best in the slope of red sand. (The red and the black soil are distinguishing terms.) Your fruit trees must be planted in your richest land, the black soil meadow. -- They will "live longer and bear better."

The Gazette of Feb. 7th, just received; Jan. 31, still behind.

Fortunate Mrs. Jarley, Professor of "wax figgers." [2] She was in luck to bite her tongue and sprain her ankle with Cora D[own].'s [3] (tongue) at her service, to explain her "figgers" and "wind up" her audience. I might not have tramped the two miles, had I been at home, to hear any common winding, but zero -- unless it got in my money purse -- could not have kept me from Mrs. D.'s performance. -- I am sure it was a most agreeable success in all respects. [There come the patter of happy little feet -- and oh, the flowers! Three huge boquets! just in time too! So here's a flower or two from each for Mrs. Gazette and brevet Professor D., with "compliments" of C. I. H. N.]

And so our world renowned Kansas Legislature originates a new sensation; appears before the foot-lights with a new primus done us (masculine for "prima donna") and expects a "benefit." I confess I am amazed that christian people are found to encore their performance! Where do they find warrant for "doing ("conspiring") evil that good may come?" -- for saving the public honor by practices that would damn the private citizen? For no honorable man or woman, even though they credit Col. [Alexander M.] York's statement, but will instinctively shrink from the traitor and despise his treachery! Senator Pomeroy is a man of at least common shrewdness and Col. Y. must have acted friendship to the life to have won such a confidence. But the baseness that could simulate friendship with the deliberately avowed purpose of winning a confidence to betray it, is a degree of moral depravity fully equal to the manufacture of the charge. -- And were Senator Pomeroy personally a stranger, instead of a long trusted friend, I would instinctively reject a man guilty, by his own disgustingly triumphant eulogy of himself and his act, of a moral falsehood abhorrent to every honorable nature. [4]

March 10th. -- If only the "daily bread" were given to us ready baked -- if only the God of "Eden" would make "coats," for the Eves of the 19th century, for the men and boys to wear, this letter would have set out on its eastward journey weeks ago; and sundry others to dear friends -- your readers. Gazettes of Feb. 15th and 22d were received last mail day. My present Postoffice address is "Pomo, Mendocino Co., Cal." -- a new and nearer Postoffice than "Potter," where our mail sometimes has a long rest.

In my next I will tell your readers -- what I have waited for the new "Code" to gather properly -- something of the California woman's rights. She has some rights in advance of eastern women, in giving which, others, which they enjoy, are withheld.

. . . Let me give you a bundle of straws gathered from observation and the local Journals.

San Francisco has a Ministerial Association composed of clergymen of every religious denomination -- orthodox and heterodox -- in the city, and that means all I think, Jews and Gentiles.

At the installation (in San Francisco,) a few weeks ago, of Dr. Rushford [6] -- Universalist -- a Presbyterian preached the sermon; a Jewish Rabbi "laid on hands" and a Methodist gave the charge.

One religious journal denounced the orthodox clergymen who assisted in the installation &c., another retorted that the Rabbi of the 19th century had taken the place of the christian, while the professed christian of the 19th century had changed places with the Jews who crucified the Christ and stoned his disciples.

A scrimped pattern of a country clergyman here about, has excluded several of his church members for dancing at a social. An eminent Orthodox divine nearer the great heart of civilization, has preached a telling sermon in behalf of properly conditioned social dancing, and urges the duty of christians to mingle in innocent amusements for their purification and encouragement -- on the ground that recreation is a condition of health and sanity too generally ignored.

The Reformed Episcopal Synod has remodelled its marriage service. For "man and wife" -- it is changed to declare the parties "husband and wife," (strange they haven't seen the incongruity before!) They also drop the words put in the mouth of the husband -- "with all my worldly goods I thee endow," it being not only false -- the wife in California not being legally secured in anything but "victuals and clothes" at the hands of the husband -- but supremely ridiculous when, as frequently happens, the wife endows the husband. It is not long since a whole congregation smiled at hearing a penniless bridegroom repeat "With all my worldly goods I thee endow" to a bride worth over half a million.

California wife takes one-third of her deceased husband's estate, But as no right of dower attaches to real estate, he can alienate the whole from his widow by deed of gift or sale during his lifetime. [7]

Either husband or wife can enter a homestead, and half of it becomes hers at his death. [8] A few months ago the wife of a gambling, thriftless man, found that he was about to dispose of his real estate to pay his debts, and took advantage of her privilege to secure to herself and children a home, by quietly filing on the home place. Great was the consternation of the creditors and the vexation of the husband. The case was ventilated in Court, and the act of the wife declared valid, as no entry of a homestead by the husband had been made.

The right of the wife to carry on business as "sole trader," is akin to the right of the wife of a drunkard to her earnings and children, in certain eastern States: in either case a secret home canker must be laid bare in the courts. To secure the right to capital and income as "sole trader," the California wife must produce proofs of the neglect or inability of her husband to support her. [9]

In California the "Common Law" still puts a death's head on the woman when she becomes a wife -- as if the marriage ceremony were an execution, instead of an endowment of all that is noblest and sweetest and holiest and in human relations -- the woman is extinguished in the wife and the wife is absorbed by the husband. The children belong to the fathers as against the mothers, who are arrested as criminals, and fined and punished for kidnapping their own children. Two such cases I have seen reported. [10]

Except so far as she holds property or earnings in her own right -- which is the lot of very few -- the wife is "dead in law." By a decision of the Fourth District Court of California, the demurrer of a husband to a suit brought against him and his wife on a contract made by her before marriage and endorsed after, was sustained. In the language of the Court -- "The defendant, Ada, being incapable of making a binding promise as a married woman, no action could he maintained against her." For the same reason her husband was not bound by her promise to pay the debt, though in receipt of her services and perfectly aware of her maternal relation to the two little boys for whose boarding school expenses the suit was brought.

The same court sustained a demurrer to a suit instituted to obtain "reformation of a deed." The complainant alleged that the mistake was a clerical error, but the demurrer claimed that courts cannot reform deeds made by minors and married women!" Why? Who can tell? Not on the ground, surely, that these more ignorant classes -- in legal matters -- are less liable to make mistakes; and it would be ungenerous to suppose the restriction was made to secure rascally advantages to other contracting parties at their expense.

In cases of divorce obtained by the wife, it is not uncommon for the Court to give her half the estate; and the children are -- in all the reports I have seen, and they occur weekly -- given to the wife, at her request. [11] In a case committed by the court to a referee, the court amended the decision of the referee, which gave the wife one-half the property of the children. His Honor declared that "one-half was not enough," and decreed an additional portion of the other half for the support of the children.

In the settlement of estates by will, I notice great liberality, as if testamentary acts were protests against legal barbarisms of the past and present. The wife and mother are studiously considered and provided with powers and means "to be" and "to do," instead of being hampered by a deceased husband's will -- "to suffer." [12]

The last Legislature passed a bill prohibiting any difference in salaries of teachers of public schools on account of sex; and making it legal to elect women trustees and directors of schools. [13] Numbers of leading men, members of the Legislature, advocated giving women a vote in school matters, but the small politicians objected. And so, little by little, woman is getting her foot in.

July 4, 1776, our revolutionary fathers -- in convention assembled -- declared their independence of the mother country; solemnly asserted the divine right of self-government and its relation to constituted authority. With liberty their shibboleth, the colonies triumphed in their long and fierce struggle with the mother country, and established an independent government. They adopted a "bill of rights" embodying their ideal of a free government.

With singular inconsistency almost their first act, while it secured to one-half the people of the body politic the right to tax and govern themselves, subjected the other half to the very oppression which had culminated in the rebellion of the colonies, "taxation without representation," and the inflictions of an authority to which they had not given their consent. The constitutional provision which enfranchised the male population of the new State and secured to it self-governing rights, disfranchised its women, and eventuated in a tyrannical use of power, which, exercised by husbands, fathers, and brothers, is infinitely more intolerable than the despotic acts of a foreign ruler.

As if left ignobly to illustrate the truths of their noble declarations, no sooner did the enfranchised class enter upon the exercise of their usurped powers than they proceeded to alienate from the mothers of humanity rights declared to be inseparable from humanity itself! Had they thrust the British yoke from the necks of their wives and daughters as indignantly as they thrust it from their own, the legal subjection of the women of to-day would not stand out as it now does -- the reproach of our republican government. As if sons did not follow the condition of the mothers -- as if daughters had no claim to the birthright of the fathers -- they established for disfranchised woman a "dead line," by retaining the English common law of marriage, which, unlike that of less liberal European governments, converts the marriage altar into an executioner's block and recognizes woman as a wife only when so denuded of personal rights that in legal phrase she is said to be -- "dead in law!"

More considerate in the matter of forms than the highwayman who kills that he may rob the unresisting dead, our gallant fathers executed women who must need cross the line of human happiness -- legally; and administered their estate; and decreed the disposition of their defunct personalities in legislative halls; only omitting to provide for the matrimonial crypt the fitting epitaph: "Here lies the relict of American freedom -- taxed to pauperism, loved to death!"

With all the modification of the last quarter of a century, our English law of marriage still invests the husband with a sovereignty almost despotic over his wife. It secures to him her personal service and savings, and the control and custody of her person as against herself. Having thus reduced the wife to a dead pauper owing service to her husband, our shrewd forefathers, to secure the bond, confiscated her natural obligations as a child and a mother. Whether married or single, only inability excuses a son from the legal support of indigent and infirm parents.

The married daughter, in the discharge of her wifely duties, may tenderly care and toil for her husband's infirm parents, or his children and grandchildren by a prior marriage, while her own parents, or children by a prior marriage -- legally divested of any claim on her or the husband who absorbs her personal services and earnings -- are sent to the poorhouse, or pine in bitter privation; except with consent of her husband, she can give neither her personal care nor the avails of her industry, for their benefit. So, to be a wife, woman ceases, in law, to be anything else -- yields up the ghost of a legal existence! That she escapes the extreme penalty of her legal bonds in any case is due to the fact that the majority of men, married or single, are notably better than their laws.

Our fathers taught the quality and initiated the form of free government. But it was left to their posterity to learn from the discipline of experience, that truths, old as the eternities, are forever revealing new phases to render possible more perfect interpretations; and to accumulate unanswerable reasons for their extended application. That the sorest trials and most appreciable failures of the government our fathers bequeathed to us, have been the direct and inevitable results of their departures from the principles they enunciated, is so patent to all christendom, that free government itself has won from our mistakes material to revolutionize the world -- lessons that compel depotisms to change their base and constitutional monarchies to make broader the phylacteries of popular rights.

Is it not meet then, that on this one-hundredth anniversary of American independence the daughters of revolutionary sires should appeal to the sons to fulfill what the fathers promised but failed to perform -- should appeal to them as the constituted executors of the father's will, to give full practical effect to the self-evident truths, that "taxation without representation is tyranny" -- that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed"? With an evident common interest in all the affairs of which government properly or improperly takes cognizance, we claim enfranchisement on the broad ground of human right, having proved the justice of our claim by the injustice which has resulted to us and ours through our disfranchisement.

We ask enfranchisement in the abiding faith that with our cooperative efforts free government would attain to higher averages of intelligence and virtue; with an innate conviction, that the sequestration of rights in the homes of the republic makes them baneful nurseries of the monopolies, rings, and fraudulent practices that are threatening the national integrity; and that so long as the fathers sequester the rights of the mothers and train their sons to exercise, and the daughters to submit to the exactions of usurped powers, our government offices will be dens of thieves and the national honor trail in the dust; and honest men come out from the fiery ordeals of faithful service, denuded of the confidence and respect justly their due. Give us liberty. We are mothers, wives, and daughters of freemen.

C. I. H. NICHOLS.

[TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY] [15]
[POMO, CALIFORNIA]
[May, 1877]

Dear Susan --

When thirty years ago Frederick Douglass [16] -- standing on the "color line" that set his black blood at cross purposes with his white blood -- exclaimed, "one with God is a majority," he was assured beyond a doubt or a fear, of the extinction of Southern slavery and the recognition of the slave as a man and a brother, entitled to equal rights of citizenship. He wrought in the strength of that conviction as only those can who work with God. And now I seem to see him -- standing on a dais of mingled hues -- with exultant reverence, saying to us, "One with God is a majority," adding in a lowered and slightly sarcastic tone -- "and $10,000 per annum with a responsible position in the National Government."

Thirty years ago a handful of women, standing as Douglass stood, on a line that sets humanity at cross purposes with itself, pledged themselves in the spirit and faith of conscious unity with God, to work out the legal and political equality of woman. [17] And in that faith they cheerfully accepted reproach and utilized failure and defeat as a preparatory discipline for so glorious a success. Step by step they won the vantage ground on which to-day a host is rallying for the final conflict.

To the women of this Republic our governments -- State and National -- are so many despotisms, their will being the law by which we are governed without our consent and against our protests.

All history proves that an unrepresented has always been a misrepresented class.

Under the three-fifth rule which made slaves a basis of representation in Congress, the National Government bound itself to the support of slavery with all its evils. When slavery suicided, that Government found it necessary for the protection of the freedmen in their individual, personal rights to enforce their enfranchisement by a Constitutional amendment.

To-day the women of this Republic appeal to the National Government to purge itself of contempt of freedom in the person of woman, and to secure to them by Constitutional amendment, the inherent rights of self-government -- and we base our appeal on its responsibility as endorsing and sustaining the States in their treatment of us as a subject and servile class.

In accepting as republican, a form of government in which one half the people of a State organize and make laws governing and taxing the whole without consent of the disfranchised half -- our National Government became responsible for all the injustice and oppression which has made woman's record in this Republic an example of hopeless struggle, or of patient adjustment to burdens heavier and more numerous than those to secure immunity from which our revolutionary sires sacrificed the best blood and treasure of the nation. And while it is true, as Senator [Aaron A.] Sargent remarked in the presentation of our petitions to the Senate of the United States in January last, -- that we "should not be left to the herculean task of applying to the States in detail," it would be impolitic and retard our cause to neglect urging upon both State and National Governments, the duty of repealing distinctions which work injustice to us, and through us, to our children. [18]

Our National and State Governments recognize marriage as the dead line of personal and property rights to woman. A wife cannot preempt or homestead government land or receive letters patent. A subsequent husband of the widow of a preemptor or homesteader, who deceased before securing his title, takes out letters patent in his own right and neither the wife nor her fatherless children have any claim on the same during his life. And if she decease before her husband, such children are paupers on his or others' bounty.

Let us then petition and protest, and keep their sin against woman and the tenderest human relations ever before them, till the unjust judge, "wearied with our importunity," or ashamed of their injustice, the governments, State and National, seek legitimate rest in a gracious consent. Yours in the faith of an enfranchised womanhood.

In a late number of the Journal, you notice the Repeal of the California Act of 1874, which made women eligible to Educational offices. [20] I am happy to assure you that the attempt of the last Legislature to repeal that act, and which came so near succeeding as to have left a general impression of its accomplishment, was defeated, mainly by the judicious efforts of lady friends in the lobby.

Our State Superintendent of Instruction, Professor [Ezra S.] Carr, [21] who resides at the State Capital, gave me the facts connected with the saving of that act, as also of the "Compulsory Education" Act, [22] which had been passed by the same (Republican) Legislature, and was equally distasteful to its Democratic "Reform" successor. Our next Legislature will probably be Republican; but, whatever its complexion, women will lose no statute right, unless, indeed, the "wife-whipping bill" [23] -- passed by the last Legislature, and which the courts have decided to be unconstitutional, should be repealed. This is an act for the public whipping of husbands who privately whip their wives. Its originators and supporters (for such gallant protection to the sex was conferred by the gallant class who give us compliments and whipping-posts, when we ask of them bread for ourselves and babies) cheered, and threw up their stove-pipes. It should have been named a "wife-silencing" bill, for where is the woman who would invite the privilege of curing the flayed back of the tyrant husband, even if she would consent to expose the father of her children to the shame of public whipping?

"Shall Women Preach?" asks "M. E. W. S." in a late number of the Journal. [25]

Yes, they must preach, and preach they will. The pressure of conscious obligation, and the need of a purely Christian ministry call them to the sacred office.

The Buckleys, [26] who make their amative aberrations an excuse for silencing virtuous women, should be expelled from the pulpit, as have been others of the cloth, for aberrations manifest in the flesh, but not more vital in the thought. "Who so looketh," etc. Women must preach, to clear the moral atmosphere of influences and communications corrupting to good manners. There are other and conclusive reasons why women should preach; reasons political and social.

At this moment there is a bee in our Liberty Cap. There were two of them, until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the slave a freedman -- despotisms both.

And what is this bee in the bonnet of our goddess to-day? and who is responsible for its being there? I answer: It is the subjection of the women of the Republic to usurped and irresponsible power. After many years of extensive observation and careful consideration, I am forced to the conclusion that the clergy are mainly responsible for its being there, as indeed they were so, by their silent assent or outspoken defense, for more than three-fourths of a century of American negro slavery.

From the beginning, our pulpits, more especially those of the Orthodox sects, have taught and fostered a despotic relation of the sexes. Man to rule; Woman to be ruled. In the marriage relation, he with the powers of a despot, she with the no rights and obligations of a slave. Her person, her conscience, her children, his to control; the very bread she earns to keep starvation at bay, his to convent into liquid fire! -- in all but the name and power to sell -- a relation the counterpart of negro slavery, and defended from the same theological platform. During my thirty years of earnest labor, at home and abroad, by lecture and pen, and in social converse, I have found the clergy, with noble and multiplying exceptions I am glad to admit, opposing our demand both for legal and political equality, as being antiscriptural and infidel.

Do I charge them falsely? Their Bible commentaries, their periodicals, their theological schools bear witness. The clergy themselves bear willing testimony in the pulpit, in conference, and on the lecture platform; with notable exceptions, they stigmatize us as "unsexed women," "Amazons," the self-willed women of the period," etc.

Yet two-thirds, at least, of the women prominent in the movement for legal and political equality are or have been, members of Christian churches, in the Church or out of it holding fast to the teachings of the Saviour as the Magna Charta of their freedom and of human rights.

Should marriage be made a despotism, that Man may rule Woman in the Church and in the State? Should men be commissioned despots, that women may be held fast and loose in a slavish bondage to their unreasoning passions?

Rev. Mr. ______, the pastor of a Congregational Church, preached, in "exchange," in three several pulpits in my native county in Vermont, in 1853, from the text: "The man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man."

"You will ask," said he, "But suppose he is a bad man, a gambler, a drunkard? I answer, the Bible reads, 'Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord;' 'As the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.' The Bible makes no reservation, and I dare make none. It is presumably the fault of the wife, if the husband is a bad man, for the Bible also teaches that 'the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife.'"

In 1861, in Dayton, Ohio, a Baptist clergyman sent his little, silent, but intently listening wife a second time from the room, lest she should hear my reply to his position that granting to the wife a right to the control of her own person, property and earnings and an equal right with the husband to the control and custody of their mutual offspring would -- by making her practically independent of the husband -- destroy the guarantees of her obedience, and thus render the Bible doctrine of the headship of man and the subjection of woman inoperative.

On board a New York canal-boat, I once saw a middle-aged, stalwart, Methodist clergyman spanking with his brawny hand a two-months-old baby, meanwhile upbraiding the pleading mother for disobedience, in nursing her child within certain hours of his prescribing.

"But I have less nourishment for it than I had at home, and it cries with hunger," sobbed the young mother.

At this juncture a motherly old lady of the society of Friends joined me in an effort to stay proceedings, as both cruel and improper, when he sent his weeping wife to her berth, and poured upon us a torrent of St. Paul. Every time the baby cried he spanked it into the hush of exhaustion -- the pitiful sobbing sleep of outraged and helpless innocence. The poor mother's eyes were kept swollen with weeping. This was in 1831.

Rev. E. D. Hurlburt, [27] in a series of published sermons on the "Domestic Relations," delivered recently before the First Baptist Church in San Francisco, says of the marital relation, (the relation of husband) "So intimate and sacred is this marital relation, so completely have these two lives blended into one, that all other human relations must be sacrificed to it."

Could an assertion of the despotic relation of the husband to the wife be couched in plainer, I am tempted to say, more offensive language? The human relations of a man, natural or otherwise, remain undisturbed by his marriage. The sacrifice of human relations, which this Rev. D. D. says "must be made," falls upon the wife. The terms "marital" and "sacrifice" which he uses, are carefully chosen, and definite. And how do the legal facts and the theological dicta of the pulpit and the divinity schools correspond? Let us see.

In becoming a wife, a woman ceases, in law, to be anything else. The human relations, pertaining or possible to her as a woman, are sacrificed in her relation of wife, to her husband. She comes from the marriage (or sacrificial) altar so divested of the claims and obligations of all her pre-existing and prospective human relations, that in legal phrase she: is "dead in law." In short, the sacrifice is so complete, that woman, the wife, is a pauper, owing service to her husband, who, in virtue of his "marital relation," "may determine where and how she shall live," (see California Statutes); what company she shall or shall not keep; what church she may or may not consort with (see Laurence vs. Laurence, Connecticut Digest of Laws); how often she may nurse her baby, or whether she shall have the control of it at all. (Kansas excepted.)

I have seen the husband and wife who began life with nothing, and who had, by their joint labor, secured a snug property -- supporting his aged parents; his helpless mother tenderly nursed by the wife personally, while her own dear, old Christian mother with tears washed down the bitter bread of pauperism in a "poorhouse" not twenty miles away. I have also seen (alas, how many!) fatherless children, bound out to service by poor-masters and Probate Courts, whose capable mothers, having married, (in ignorance of such legal disabilities) were incompetent in law to contract for or make them homes under their own supervision, because the service they owed their husbands was "so sacred" that to it must be sacrificed the tenderest claims of the filial and maternal relations. I have said the sacrifice falls to the wife; but I must add -- not on the wife alone. In vacating the natural obligations of the married daughter to her needy parents, and of the mother to her fatherless children, the natural claims of helpless and dependent parents and fatherless children are struck down, sundering "what God has joined."

But these facts must suffice for my present purpose, which is to show the logical connection between the teachings of the clergy, and the theory and practice of the State, as regards Woman in her relations with man. It is a significant fact, accounting primarily for this state of things, that, till recently, the interpretation and preaching of Bible doctrines have been left to, if not monopolized by men. Men whose personal interests in their relations with women, whether in the Church or out, being agreeably assured by superficial renderings of text and context, were content to leave the great underlying purpose and spirit of God's Word, as declared in the creation and consecration of a dual humanity, and emphasized in Christ and his mission, half-smothered beneath the debris of barbarous customs and prejudices. In support of this view of the matter, it is worthy of note, that wherever literal or superficial interpretations of duties enjoined, as towards "the powers that be," have barred man's progress, or restrained his ambition for a freer, fuller, or more humane development, he has boldly challenged the spirit of the Gospel and buried its dead letter without a qualm of conscience, though at a cost of precious lives and untold suffering and treasure. Searching by the light of personal interest, Man has found in the spirit of the Gospel a limit to the authority of "the powers that be," and inside that limit has secured personal and political freedom for himself; but he holds Woman subject to conditions which he Himself has spurned; excludes her from participation in the administration of affairs, and assumes to himself alone "dominion" and possession which the Creator gave to "them."

Like the body-servants of emancipated masters, women have learned, in their intercourse with enfranchised manhood, to appreciate freedom. From their exceptional standpoint of experience and observation, they see in this freedom to be, to do, and to enjoy, divine and human uses, which the moral sense of men, blunted and perverted by generations of habitual and selfish uses and usurpations of petty power, fails to discern, except "as trees walking."

Can Man progress and Woman stand still? Nay. Won by her loving sympathy with him, and driven by her own needs and aspirations, she too must travel, but as something nobler than the vivandier of a marauding power. Obedient to the divinity that inspires her with faith in a Saviour from sin and from the curse of sin, it is now her ministry to exhume the Herculaneums and Pompeiis of divine truth, in behalf of justice to herself, and to reclaim man from a habitude of injustice, which, like narcotic poisons in the blood, has made him blind and deaf to the sweet harmonics of God's law of co-sovereignty and co-possession.

"Let them have dominion," etc., Genesis 1. 26-28. [28]

MRS. C. I. H. NICHOLS.

[TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY] [29]
[POMO, CALIFORNIA]
[July, 1878]

[Dear Susan:]

If a general report or summing up would be made, it will be seen that, putting one section with another, the 'powers that be' have justified our demand for equal, legal and political rights, by conceding in whole or in part, that is by laws of general or special application for the removal of disabilities -- what we ask.

We have broken the lines of our opponents at all points, and got possession of inside positions which assure the whole world of our ultimate triumph.

[C. I. H. NICHOLS]

[TO VIRGINIA MINOR] [30]
POMO, CALIFORNIA
April 25th, 1879

Dear Mrs. Minor:

Your invitation to confer with the friends in Convention at St. Louis, May 9th, found me ill in bed where I have lain since the last of December, with doubtful prospect of recovery for useful activities. Still my thoughts are with you and the cause to which I have given the best and unstinted efforts of my life. I can write but little and that little must be brief and suggestive rather than logical and conclusive.

Our workers have reached bed-rock; they are dealing with "bottom facts," -- facts on which they have planted the moral lever that will surely overturn the great fundamental wrong and deal summarily with man's inhumanity to woman.

Woman's enfranchisement involves the reconstruction of the sexual relation upon the basis of divine law. Without this, any remedy for the "social evil" is only a "scotching of the snake." Without woman's enfranchisement, divorce as a remedy for "the hardness of men's hearts," will become the rule and marriage the exception -- and without lessening the domestic evil. That evil is the bitter fruit of the personal subjection of the wife and mother to the passional demands of the husband as taught by the Church and enforced by the State. It has filled our cemeteries with infant graves -- the imperfect fruit of overtaxed maternal and sexual organisms.

The toleration of sexual excesses as the marital prerogative -- like polygamy protected by law -- tears down the revolting features of licentiousness outside the marriage relation and fosters the demand for brothels with "regulations" insuring men who frequent them against the disease which God has affixed as a penalty for this crowning sin against nature.

Much has been said by religious presses opposed to woman's enfranchisement, about the heresey of the 9th Resolution adopted by the late Rochester Convention. [31] I regretted -- not the adoption of the resolution -- but the omission of illustrating facts, and to supply these I beg leave to introduce the following brief extracts from a published sermon delivered March, 1877, by Rev. E. B. Hurlburt, now of Chicago, in the First Baptist Church of San Francisco, on the relation of Husband and Wife.

The first position, viz: -- "So intimate and sacred is the marital relation, that all other human relations must be sacrificed to it." As if in the divine wisdom and economy all human relations are not in accord, -- as if the relation of the mother to her child, in its pre-natal and helpless post-natal conditions, do not take precedence of marital prerogative.

EXTRACT 2

"The principle objection to the Episcopal marriage service raised by the self-willed woman of the period is, that it requires her to obey her husband. But this objection is levelled equally against the requirement of the word of God, and, furthermore, the additional promise to honor and love Him can only be kept in the spirit of obedience. This obligation is founded upon the fact that he is her husband, and if she cannot reverence him for what he is in himself, still she must reverence him for the position which he holds. And, again, she must render this submissive reverence to her husband's headship 'as unto the Lord,' 'as is fit in the Lord.' She reverences him not simply as a man, but as her own husband, behind whom stands the Lord himself. It is the Lord who has made him husband, and the honor with which she regards him, though himself personally not deserving it, is in reality an honoring of the Lord. Many a Christian woman, actuated by this motive, has been most tenderly submissive, dutiful and patient, as towards the most unreasonable and despotic of husbands -- inspired by the remembrance that it was a service rendered unto Christ. Let the wife, then, reverence her husband for what he is in himself, for his loving and noble qualities; but if these qualities do not belong to him, then let her reverence him for the sake of his office -- simply because he is her husband, -- and in either event let her reverence him, because in doing so she is honoring the Lord and Savior."

Which, let me ask, is preferable, the Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary and Priestly absolution and indulgences, or this Protestant doctrine that puts "the Lord behind," "the most unreasonable and despotic of husbands to enforce his authority?" The Bible says, "ye cannot serve two masters." Are God and man in such happy unity, that in obeying an "unbelieving, unreasonable and despotic husband," a wife is rendering service unto Christ, -- "is in reality honoring the Lord?" Did Christ, "the seed of the woman" die to save her from sin, and rise again to subject her to its hateful service, -- rise to "stand behind" the most unreasonable of husbands and pluck honors for his thorn-pierced brow from the tenderly submissive victim of such tyranny?

Rev. Mr. Hurlburt enforces as Bible doctrine, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers," and adds, "It is not a question of practical moment to those who are already married. If you are joined in wedlock to one who is not a Christian, it is too late now to find a remedy. Your marriage is valid in the eye of the law and in the eye of God."

If the Lord has made husbands of these unbelieving, unreasonable and despotic men, as Mr. H., says, the Lord has invalidated his own expressed will. If the Lord has not made the unequal match, then the misguided pair have succeeded in making that valid in the eye of God which according to Mr. H., is contrary to His command. What a God! alas! it is such interpretations of Scripture which as Rev. Mr. Ijams [32] of the Presbyterian faith, says in another connection, -- "have made an Ingersoll possible," [33] and I might add, as necessary in the moral world as a cyclone or electrical explosion in the physical. Mr. H., says further: "It may not be discourteous to remind these wives of some of the Scripture teachings on this subject. It is to be supposed that none of them have forgotten where they came from originally. "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." And the design of this creation was that she might be a helpmeet for him.

It was this same woman, likewise, the mother of mankind, who fast partook "of that forbidden tree," whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe. And for this transgression the penalty pronounced upon her was, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." In view of these facts the apostle is constrained to write. "The man is the image of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man." "I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." In keeping with all this how frequently do we read in the New Testament such injunctions as these: "Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church. . . . Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement."

"The self-willed woman of the period" remembers some Bible which Rev. Mr. H., and some of his confreres seem to ignore. She remembers reverently, that in the divine fatherhood and human motherhood of Christ, God preferred woman before man as co-worker with him in the re-construction of rebel humanity. She remembers gratefully, that true to His original design of "good" through woman's creation, and to insure against her complicity with evil in the future, God put woman at enmity with the serpent and promised that "the seed of the woman" should bruise his head.

She remembers further, that woman was, when both were innocent -- formerly declared co-possessor and co-sovereign with man of all the earth and everything in it, on it and above it, because it was "not good" that "the man should be alone" in the responsibility. She denies that Adam, Eve and the serpent combined had power to repeal creative law or change creative design. God's laws being conceived in infinite wisdom, are as unchangeable as himself, and subject neither to amendment or reconsideration in the divine mind. Under the rule of reconstruction through Christ, in whom "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, bond nor free" this self-willed woman claims her original equal rights under the divine patent, that through her help, good may result where failure and human degradation have been the outcome of man's efforts to possess and govern the earth "alone."

But I am not writing a theological essay. If I were I might speak, in detail of Apostolic lessons of submission to "the powers that be," including slaveholders and despotic husbands, as belonging to a gospel of expediency which under the pressure of 19th century moral and intellectual culture, is being rapidly eliminated from the Christian Church and Pulpit. I might speak of that "curse," might tell that thirty years ago first class New England clergymen objected to the use of anaesthetics to assuage the pains of childbirth, even debated it in ministerial meeting -- as a sacriligious interference with the curse! and I might predict that in another thirty years clergymen who are enforcing the duty of submission to an authority which they admit is a curse to woman, will be as dumb to the "roll call" of marital prerogative, as their predecessors now are to the question of scientific evasion of suffering.

True, God said to Eve of her husband, "he shall rule over thee," and he has done it. He also said to the Serpent of the "seed of the woman," "thou shalt bruise his heel," and the Serpent has done it. If the first is a command authorizing the husband to rule over the wife, then (the language used being the same) the last is a command of God authorizing the Serpent to work his wicked will on the human race, the very crime for which he is arraigned by the Almighty. God simply announced these results as in the role of evils inaugurated through disobedience to divine law; and leaving man to his arrogance God comforted the woman with the promise of Christ the Saviour.

In the Journal of May 10, "R. B. E." in criticising the communication of Mrs. Ada C. Bowles, headed "The Chinese in California, [35] -- expresses a wish from which she refrains for want of space -- "to say something in regard to the privilege which some of our eastern brethren have selected for themselves, of voting foreigners out of their towns."

I think "R. B. E." is mistaken about there being any legal authority vested in towns to discriminate against foreigners in the matter of residence. The foreigner by complying with certain naturalization laws, can become a citizen of any State in the Union, and as such enjoys equal rights of citizenship with the native. But there was a pauper law in the New England and other old States under which the "Select Men" of a town could, by serving a "legal notice" to that effect, prevent any person from "gaining a residence" therein, who in their judgment, was liable to become a "town charge." An actual pauper -- a person receiving aid or support of the town -- lost thereby his right to vote in town affairs; he could still vote for Presidential electors and county officials. I have seen no notice of the repeal of these laws in any State. They were in force in Vermont in 1854 when I left the State for Kansas, and I learn from the instructions of your Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Committee, published in the Journal of May 31 -- to women who are asking what steps they must take in order to vote for school directors -- that pauperism still disfranchises the male citizen of Massachusetts. Probably the pauper "warning out of town" is still lawful as a protective measure.

During the eleven years in which I edited the Windham County Democrat, I had frequent occasion to ventilate these pauper laws. I had scarcely entered my teens when their execution came under my observation and stirred my soul to its depths with indignation, pity, and once, as I remember, with keen enjoyment of a righteous and most ridiculous retribution. "R. B. E.'s" remarks recalled several incidents in this connection one of which, illustrating as it does, the "sacredness" of our civil marriage -- so harped upon by the clerical profession -- and the "harmony of the statutes" -- so jealously guarded by the legal profession -- I am tempted to narrate. It may do for another woman what it did for me -- unsettle her faith in the infallibility of a purely male government, and suggest the divine wisdom of feminine cooperation in every department of life charged with the interests and destinies of a common humanity. It may suggest the duty and inspire the desire in some womanly soul to work for her right -- to use the words of certain D. D.'s in late sermons on the "Domestic Relations" -- "to take the place for which God and (her) nature have designed her."

On a hot Sabbath morning in June, 1821, a fat, dust-begrimed, sun-burned woman dropped into a chair beside the open door of my mother's cosy kitchen, exclaiming as she did so, "It's dredful hot! O, Rhody, I wish you was in Heaven." The wish was addressed to a year-old baby, which with an immense patch-work "work-pocket" she proceeded to place upon the shady doorstep beside her. "How far are you traveling?" asked my mother. "I ain't goin' no further, I'm to the end uv my journey." "Indeed," rejoined my mother, "and may I ask who you are, and what is your business here?" "Oh yes'm. I'm Sam H.'s wife. They told me your husband was head Selectman and would take care of me and my baby."

A few judicious questions drew out the facts of the case. Sam H., a half-witted fellow, had wandered across the State line into New York and found his mate. Foreseeing a pauper increase, the authorities of the town -- her native town -- to evade the burden, brought about the marriage of the parties. By the marriage the woman's residence was merged in Sam's and as he had not yet acquired a residence in the State the requisite notice was served on him, and the town secured against any lawful claim of his family to the pauper's support. Sam was willing to work and content with comfortable food and clothing, but nobody wanted the wife who would not support herself or babies. So the town authorities, who had shrewdly put matters in train, escorted her across the line and in the gray dawn of this Sabbath morning, set her down in the vicinity of her husband's residence to claim her right to be maintained.

When Saturday night came round, Mrs. H. who, during the week had been an honored guest and made the acquaintance of the "Selectmen" of her husband's native town was escorted across the State line, a distance of thirty miles, and set down to make her way back to Sam and the unknown qualities of marriage and citizenship.

Seven years later there was an immigration from New York which set the whole town to counting the cost -- Mrs. Sam and Rhoda escorted by Sam and four little hatless and shoeless fellows -- a respectable increase. Was not Mrs. Sam avenged? This time they staid.

CLARINA I. HOWARD NICHOLS.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL] [36]
POMO, CALIFORNIA
July 27, 1879.

Editors Journal: --

Some months ago in noticing the school law adopted by New Hampshire, the Journal remarked that "early in 1867 the women of Kansas were entitled to vote on school questions." [37]

In 1867 the women of Kansas had for seven years exercised the right to vote in all school matters, under a constitutional provision declaring that "in providing for the formation and conduct of schools no distinctions shall be made between males and females." That constitution also provided for equal educational rights and privileges in the colleges and institutions of learning controlled or fostered by the State. Also that mothers have equal rights with fathers in the control and custody of their mutual offspring. Twenty years have passed since then. In these provisions in the interest of women, Kansas was first, and may be excused for claiming the glory, of having led where other States glory in following her example.

This constitution was adopted in November, 1859, by popular vote. In January, 1860 [1861] -- Kansas having been admitted to the Union -- the first State Legislature met at Topeka, the capital of the new State. I attended its sessions, as I had those of the Convention, and addressed both in behalf of justice for the women of the State -- as delegate of a Kansas Woman's Rights Association. [38]

This Association was formed in the spring of 1859 with special reference to the Convention which had already been called to meet in the July following, in the city of Wyandott, in the neighborhood of which city I had some two years before made my home. The Association -- if I recollect aright -- numbered some twenty-five earnest men and women of the John Brown type, living in Moneka, Linn county; John Wattles, President; Susan Wattles, Secretary. Wendell Phillips, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the New England Woman's Rights Association guaranteed payment of expenses, and the Association sent me, with limited hopes and unstinted blessings, to canvass the principal settlements in the Territory, obtain names to positions and represent them -- if allowed by courtesy of the Convention -- in behalf of equal legal and political rights for the women of the State to be organized.

After spending some four weeks in the field, I went to the Convention and with a very dear friend, Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong, of Wyandott, was given a permanent seat beside the chaplain of the Convention, Rev. Mr. [Werter R.] Davis Presiding Elder [39] of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the District, which I occupied till the adjournment of the Convention, laboring to develop an active and corresponding interest in outsiders as well as members until my petitions had been acted upon and the provisions finally passed -- purposely late in the session. Having at the commencement only two known friends of our cause, among the delegates to rely upon for its advocacy against the compact opposition of the sixteen Democratic delegates and the bitter prejudices of several of the strongest Republicans, including the first Chief Justice of the new State [40] and its present unreconstructed Senator [John J.] Ingalls, [41] an early report upon our petitions would have been utter defeat.

Persistent "button-holing" of the delegates -- any "unwomanly obtrusiveness" of manners -- a vague apprehension of which, at that period of our movement, was associated in the minds of even good men and women, with the advocacy of the cause, was the "big 'fraid" followed by more than one "little 'fraid," that made my course one of anxiety less only than my faith in the ultimate adoption of the provisions named. Of political suffrage I had -- as I confidentially told my friends of the Association -- no hope, and for the very reason given me later by members of the Convention who consented to school suffrage; viz.: "even if endorsed by popular vote, such a provision would probably defeat admission to the Union." None the less, however, was the necessity for disarming the prejudices and impressing upon delegates and citizens the justice of the demand for political enfranchisement.

Fortunately, the hospitable tea-table of Mrs. Armstrong, with whom I was domiciled for the session, offered abundant womanly opportunity for conference and discussion with delegates, and in the homes of leading citizens I met a hearty sympathy which I can never forget. In compliance with the earnest request of delegates, supported by the action of the Association, I labored from the adjournment of the Convention till the vote on the adoption of the Constitution, to "remove the prejudices" -- as the delegates expressed it -- "of their constituents against the Woman's Rights provisions" of that document. The death of Mr. [John O.] Wattles on the eve of the campaign sent me alone into the lecture field. For there was not a woman in the Territory who had ever spoken in public for the equal rights of women. With the exception of Hon. Charles Robinson, our first State governor, and always an outspoken friend of our cause, the politicians in the field either ignored or ridiculed the idea of women being entitled under the school provision to vote! Hon. James H. Lane declared "It would never do, for vile women would go to the polls; that the courts would decide against construing the provision as involving a right to vote," etc.

In 1854, when I was about leaving Vermont for Kansas, an earnest friend of our cause protested that I was "going to bury myself in Kansas, and just as I had won an influence and wakened a public sentiment that assured the success of demand for our equal rights." I replied that it was a thousand times more difficult to procure the repeal of unjust laws in an old State than the adoption of just laws in the organization of a new State. That I could accomplish more for Woman -- even the women of the old States -- and with less effort, in the new State of Kansas, than I could in conservative old Vermont whose prejudices were so much stronger than its convictions, that justice to women must stand a criminal trial in every court of the State to win; and then pay the costs. I was reminded of this conversation by the remark of Mrs. [Mary A.] Livermore [42] at an East Boston meeting, as reported in the Journal -- that "The advance spirits of New England had gone West and had had women voting for ten years, while all the conservatives had stayed at home and put on the brakes and stopped matters where they were, and denied women their rights." [43]

CLARINA I. HOWARD NICHOLS.

[TO ELIZABETH CADY STANTON] [44]
POMO, CALIFORNIA
December 30, 1879.

Dear Mrs. Stanton:

In petitioning Congress to submit to the States a constitutional amendment enfranchising women, we should not neglect to press upon it the duty of eliminating from its own laws every unjust discrimination against them. [45]

The Constitution gives Congress "power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory or other property belonging to the United States."

Under this provision of the Constitution, Congress enacted laws and adopted rules that excluded women from all pre-emptory rights in the public domain. Some years since -- influenced perhaps by Oregon (?) which, as a premium on immigration, offered to single women, and to married women in their own right and without abatement of the husband's pre-emption, 160 [320] acres of its unoccupied lands -- Congress so amended its homestead and pre-empt laws, that unmarried women can pre-empt land, and make themselves homes on the national domain, on the same terms as men. [46] But married women are still incompetent, under the laws of Congress, to acquire and possess homes. Has Congress ever asked itself "why this discriminating injustice to a class of women which, more than my other, deserves its protection?" A class whose long-suffering patient toil and privations, have made possible the subduing of its vast area of wilderness to the manifold uses of a thrifty, intelligent and self-governing people? Even the alien is lured to our shores by the promise of a Government patent to the homestead his labor can win. [47]

Congress is prohibited by the Constitution from taking private property for public uses without just compensation, and is given no right to sequester such property to the use and possession of private individuals. Why then should Congress condemn a woman's property right in earnings to the sole use and control of her husband? Why refuse to recognize her services as an improver of the public domain, by an issue of its patents to husband and wife jointly -- said improvements being the result of their joint efforts?

Marriage is not a crime that its commission should subject her to the convict penalty of unpaid labor. And if it were treason against the integrity of the Union, she might expect from the leniency of Congress, removal of her disabilities and reinstatement in her sequestered earnings.

Civil marriage, which can properly take note only of exterior conditions, must, like all other civil institutions, respond to the pressure of the moral and intellectual development of the masses. And he has small claim to statesmanship who expects that any class of persons in a republic maintaining free schools, free churches, and the doctrine of individual sovereignty, will long tacitly submit to laws and usages in direct conflict with the fundamental principles of self-government. All history, our own history notably, disproves such a possibility.

It is a natural sequence of increasing knowledge and appreciation of rights, as guarantees of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," that men and women of pure lives and honest convictions, who see in the increase of divorce facilities only increased repugnance to marital proprietorship, should seek to purge civil marriage of its contempt of justice. And when this is done -- when women like men can contract marriage without a surrender of their natural right to the control of their persons, earnings and custody of children; when marriage ceases to be personal bankruptcy to the wife, there will be less need, and fewer calls for divorce. And when custom -- under equal laws -- shall have exorcised a domineering spirit in the one, and an irritating sense of subject conditions in the other, the married pair will oftener [sic] prove the beautiful possibility of a "united head" of the family. Equality of rights attaches to the individual "by the Grace of God," in every human relation and the only remedy adequate to the threatened integrity of marriage, and in dignity as a divine institution -- will be found in the civil and social recognition of the equality of husband and wife. [48]

C. I. H. NICHOLS.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL CITIZEN
AND BALLOT BOX] [49]
[POMO, CALIFORNIA]
[March 18, 1880]

[Dear Editor:]

I notice that in a Washington Convention motto, California is set down as voting on educational matters. [50] I don't know but the present Legislature may make it a fact, but as yet California women are only eligible to the offices. I am sorry to have more claimed as won than is correct, for a single error of this kind throws doubts on other alleged gains to the cause. [51]

[C. I. H. NICHOLS]

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL CITIZEN
AND BALLOT BOX] [52]
[POMO, CALIFORNIA]
[March, 1880]

[Dear Editor:]

A pre-emptor of government land often has to wait the convenience of Land Office officials, for his "patent," after proving and paying up on his improvement. A single woman having "proved and paid," who marries before the making out of her patent, would be just in the predicament of Phoebe Larkin [53] as reported by a Washington correspondent of the [Portland] Oregonian, who, as Mrs. Rainey, is denied the patent which she had legally won by improvements and cash paid. The Land Office wants Congressional action legalizing the conveyance of the patent to the wife or enabling it to return the price received for the improved land. As the injustice and absurdity of any attempt to void her claim be retaining the mixed consideration, viz: money and IMPROVEMENTS, drawn upon the Congressional mind, I think it will have to succumb to a general law making married women eligible to preemptory rights.

The Woman's Journal "Oregonian" report, states the matter as if Phoebe were married before proving up and paying, which could not have been as evidenced by the refusal of the patent on the ground of her marriage. [54] Only single women can enter land in the first instance, and this, "Phoebe Larkin" had done, as well as "proved up" and paid. As Mrs. Rainey she would not have been allowed to do either. I have known several instances where single women married and lost their patents. The husband in one instance paid and took the title to the land. [55]

We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel, we will keep our home spheres bright and train the children that we bear to be temperate and pure, only take from us the legal disabilities that have made us weak to resist, and men strong to oppress. We will rise in the might of our love and the power of a divine purpose and break the bands of pauperism and crime that are a reproach to any people and a disgrace to our vaunted Republican freedom. "Only let us" -- the women of the nation, -- "be called" on the roll of enfranchised citizens.

Experience and observation have taught us that we cannot look to men whose professional positions and franchises are at stake, to prosecute reforms which ignore their cherished traditions and de-harmonize their professional systems. Men least trammelled by professional associations hesitate to take an advance step, if it foreshadow their consequent disruption.

Every eminent reformer in the interest of truth and righteousness, of whom in the world's history we have practical evidence, has been either a "come-outer" or a turned-outer of the saintdom of the generation in which he or she lived. To his own "Jewry," Christ was a heretic and an infidel. As with Christ so with his followers. The greater the truth the greater the heresy, if it arraign the tithers of "mint, annis and cummin" for neglect of "weightier matters of the law."

Professional associations, traditions and theories resist, when they cease to aid, human development, and like the bark of the vigorously-growing tree, must give way or be sundered, else disease and dissolution of the vital organism are the result.

One of the truest men and most eminent lawyers of Vermont, a United States District Judge, with whom I had discussed, point by point, women's legal disabilities, -- he frankly conceding their injustice, while ably presenting every popular and professional argument in their favor -- concluded with the remark that he had discussed the subject with some of the ablest members of the bar, but they could see no way to redress the wrongs of which we complained. Said he, "The difficulty is this: the reform you ask is fundamental, and would destroy the harmony of the statutes!" As with the bar, so with the pulpit. The harmony of theological tenets is, to the professional mind, more expedient than the enlarged apprehension of divine truth, -- as if paste in gold settings were of more worth than diamonds in the rough.

A clerical friend with whom I was accustomed to discuss Bible questions, submitted one of these, with the points I had made, to his local ministerial meeting. A member was appointed to write it up for discussion in a subsequent meeting. When I inquired for the issue of the discussion, my friend hesitated and reluctantly replied, that "it was decided inexpedient -- ahem -- the fact is, Sister Nichols, questions have before risen and conclusions adopted been abandoned, as they were found to unsettle established tenets." The theological harmonicon was, alas, too delicate for the touch of truth!

To others of the profession, position and its franchises are personal considerations of scarcely less moment than creeds. In the early days of my field labor I encountered Rev. C. W______, D. D., a former pastor of the East Brattleboro' Congregational Church. As I was on my way to a lecture appointment we naturally fell into a discussion of the Woman question, and soon drifted into the ministry, for which I claimed the world's need and Woman's eminent fitness. From both positions the reverend gentleman dissented, and to my rejoinder, that he must except Mrs. Sampson [58] of the West Brattleboro' Church, who, within his own knowledge, had, by her public exhortations in conference and prayer meetings, and after the regular Sabbath exercises, been the acknowledged means of conversion to more than thirty members of that church, -- he replied that "even Mrs. Sampson had, he believed, done more harm than good." Surprised, I exclaimed, "How, pray explain!"

"Well," said he, "she is a good woman, and her piety is undoubted. She has been labored with again and again. She apologizes and weeps and promises to try and refrain, but the very next opportunity she loses her self-control, and cries, 'Wo is me if I withhold my testimony,' etc., etc. We don't know what to do with her. The harm of such a ministry is in the disrelish it engenders for the stated means of grace!"

I could not help saying, "Your reply admits the saving power of a free gospel and suggests its need as a stated means of grace." Fill the pulpits with earnest, practical teachers like Mrs. S. and this "disrelish for the stated means of grace" will be found to have attached to the "sound, doctrinal sermons" and prosy delivery, for which her rebukes were eminently known. The age in which we live and must do our work is preeminently a practical age; Woman is eminently practical, earnest and sympathetic. A practical, earnest Christian habitude is the need, and happily the demand of the age. Quick to respond, Woman has gathered into her own hands the great benevolent institutions to which Christian men and women look for the reclamation of the erring and the protection of the innocent. From being an irresponsible servitor in the cause of humanity, she has become treasurer and almoner as well as fund creator and has proved her divine commission to preach as well as pray -- to sow in season and out of season, in the pulpit and out of it, truths that touch the human life in home and church and State.

The historical event you are met to commemorate is too full of significance as inaugurating in my life a fuller and pronounced co?peration with the gathering forces of the "Woman's Rights" movement, -- so-called, -- ever to be other than gratefully remembered. On that occasion, for the first time, I was loosed from my dependence upon the pen. Inspired from without by the intelligent attention of a crowd of enfranchised men, and urged from within by the irrepressible conflict of duties, responsibilities and legal disabilities -- my straitened soul broke the seal from my lips, forgetful of the Mrs. Grundys everywhere, and of the half dozen newspaper reporters before me, -- mindful only of the opportunity then and there to plead with enfranchised man for justice to disfranchised woman.

Years before I had arraigned a beloved uncle, who had often been a member of the State Legislature, for not procuring a repeal of the obnoxious laws concerning wife, widow and mother. He replied, -- " I proposed to leading members in my first session, to change these laws, but they only laughed at me, asked if I was going to turn 'lady's man,' and said it would be time enough to change the laws 'when the women made a fuss.' I rejoiced in my heart of hearts on that memorable occasion, that I could help to inaugurate that "fuss" that would henceforth justify every man disposed to relieve us from legalized oppression, -- not only justify but force men, for their honor's sake, to let oppressed Woman help make the laws by which she and her children are governed."

And now, thirty years later, so great has this "fuss" become, that neither liquor rings nor political rings, nor marriage rings, nor ecclesiastical rings, can ring the new era in woman's life out, and the old era in again. Both men and women have outgrown the social, industrial and political usages of thirty years ago. The leaders in the Suffrage movement may all die -- two to one will spring from the ranks to bear aloft the glorious banner of a free womanhood. Differences as to ways and means will now and then, as in all human associations, agitate the surface of affairs, but the deep underlying love of humanity for humanity's sake, which is the life and sinew of our cause, will restore the disturbed equilibrium.

Physical weakness forbids me to say more, as it has prevented me from saying well the little I have attempted. But neither illness nor distance can weaken my love for our cause and its faithful armor-bearers -- Heaven bless us all!

Affectionately,
C. I. H. NICHOLS.

[TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY] [60]
POMO [CALIFORNIA]
Oct. 30th 1880

Dear Susan --

Yours of Sept. 1st was a feast of good things. I have read it over and over many times. It had been long looked for but without impatience or question, knowing as I do that as Executive "at large" and councillor at pivotal centres your duties are enough to use up any three ordinary women (bodily I mean) and still leave much important work untouched. [61] In it all I have felt what a blessing in your bereavement of the beloved mother, whose death looses forever the family bond [62] -- to be inspired with the pressing demand and noblest possibilities of a living, developing humanity: -- to be solaced by daily evidences that your heart and intellect are in efficient contact with controlling influences -- God himself working in & with you -- Oh Susan! if only I could -- if as a disembodied spirit, I could choose my lot, I would be content to become your good angel, comforting, strengthening & communicating from the unseen life help for your labor in this. Perhaps I may; be sure, my dear, & turn to me as near in all your needy moods, when I am missing here.

I love my home and family: no duty to them seems sacrificial however difficult or sad. But in all the years of my developing womanhood I have been so gradually and naturally absorbed by the divinely engineered struggle between the inhered good and self-imposed evil permeating human relations, as bearing upon every individual member of the human family, that my dear ones have come to be to me inseparable from humanity in its worst as in its best state. Every injustice is an infringement on their interests; a dead weight on their development and every conquest for the right I feel is a letting in of Heaven's sunshine upon them, assuring a nobler growth and increased facilities for useful endeavor. I think when I see evidences of disappointment and impatience in our leading workers at occasional seeming defeat of some special effort, that "I alone of all the prophets" (the language of poor solitary Elijah) have been privileged to enjoy in undoubting trust -- from my first pen-tracks in 1847 -- the ultimate practical equality of woman, as an acknowledged power in every department of Gov[ernmen]t and society, by natural endowment of capacity and right.

No movement defeated; no obstacle to success, has seemed to me anything worse than the divine discipline that trains and develops for more farreaching and worthily sustained results. The longer and more determined the conflict for our human rights, the more thorough will be our understanding of and our consecration to the duties and responsibilities involved. We will make fewer mistakes in their discharge and carry to our work a character for moral and intellectual foresight and practical wisdom, which will give us readier access to the ways and means of renovating gov[ernmen]t and society.

Oct. [November] 7th Since writing the above the events of the next 4 years has been determined and another fight for the black man's rights is looming in the political heavens. And I am content. You see dear Susan I nominated [James A.] Garfield [63] before the politicians even mentioned him -- to my sister Ellen [Sophie Cobb] [64] last fall. I noted his course in Cong[ress]. from the first. I was in Washington: listened to him in speech & debate &c. Well, you must remember I edited a political paper, bolted from Gen[era]l [Lewis] Cass [65] on "free territory" & held the republican ground, homestead included, from the first & for one year without a party. It was my business to study & find the practical in all the questions involved. From being my business it became my pleasure, as involving the life & progress of -- not only my country -- but humanity. It -- gov[ernmen]t -- was a tree rooted in the family, blossoming & fruiting and needing pruning here (in the branches) and stimilating there (in the roots).

I have learned that by earnest practical efforts we can hasten, but by no known wise means force the natural growth in gov[ernmen]t beyond the sustaining power of its roots. Do you comprehend my meaning? I could say better but I am wasting strength & paper to attempt a written exposition. Suffice it that I was not disappointed by the failure of the efforts to win recognition of our cause at the Con[ventio]ns. I knew that neither Dem[ocratic]. nor Rep[ublican]. [conventions] could afford an honest recognition (which meant work for it) -- and I desired no other. It would have -- I do not say should have -- crippled them in their wheelers. And I want Garfield's pluck to carry out (what I believe is) the purpose of compelling the South to accord a free ballot to the blacks. We were on the eve of a war between north & south -- I am not certain that we have escaped attempted armed resistance. But woman's enfr[anchisemen]t, I believe is furthered by G[arfield]'s election.

Our enfranchisement I believe is to be the result of spontaneous not party actions. Until the question of caste is settled, this of the rights of the sexes will be held in abeyance by the two great parties. I can see but one other chance and that a remote one: -- if any considerable number of the States should, under the pressure of temperance, enfranchise their female citizens, or our allies from any cause wield a sufficient balance of power to make our votes an object in a close struggle for power. -- Then the Con[stitutiona]l amendment might be carried & our enfranchis[emen]t secured as a national measure. But the rummies & the slavocrats while they hold the bal[ance]. of power will never let us be armed with the ballot to cut off their grog and snub their love of power.

See what Cal[ifornia]. wineries are doing. Every rancher who raises a ton or two of grapes to sell near a winery -- no matter how temperately inclined -- is jealous of any obstacle to its prosperity. Fear that women will -- if allowed to vote in election of school officers -- make it the 1st rung in the climb to a ballot for temperance till outgrown by a majority made up of better interests defeated her in the Constitutional Con[vention]. & will defeat her in every effort that looks to freedom from the liquor curse. Now that other topic -- buying votes!

The Betty of the W[oman]'s Jour[nal]. says it is "immoral" &c. [66] Voting is a simple expression of the will of the voters on a legally submitted question. In questions of moral right & wrong to vote on the wrong side would be an immoral act for the un-bought voter. What would it be for the voter paid to vote for the right? This right to vote is a right to vote for either the right or wrong of the question submitted. But if he votes for the wrong he commits an immoral act, if he votes for the right -- bought or not bought to do so -- his act cannot be immoral -- neither can the purchaser of his vote for the right be engaged in anything but "moral suasion." The difference between men & women vote buyers will be that women will buy votes, if they buy at all, for righteous men & measures, temperance, virtue &c. As for the possibility of women's buying votes "putting off" our enfranchisement -- nonsense. It has never hindered the extension of the ballot to men.

[C. I. H. NICHOLS]

Thank you ever so much for the papers. I have tried in vain to get such thin widelined paper here. Also for envelopes.

[TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY] [67]
[POMO, CALIFORNIA]
Nov. 11th [1880]

Dear Susan --

Your last is rec[eive]d also a letter from Mrs. [Matilda Joslyn] Cage. I am very glad you are getting at work on the history. Perhaps I may live to see a vol. published: I earnestly desire it. [68] I am truly sorry that she is so "belittled" by her enlarged area of activities, but I was highly amused by the putchiky (do you recognize the term?) exhibitions of L[ucy]'s [Stone] jealousy, envy or whatever name it deserves. I inclose her letter which was followed by a postal urging me to write to the Con[ventio]n. [69] I inclose also a portion of my letter to the Co[nventio]n which you can put with the concluding request of the letter & then conclude with me that she won't read it in Con[ventio]n. She may not have received it in time. I was too ill to write for some days & after it had gone found that the mail time had been changed making two to three days difference against it -- Tho' if sent special delivery Lucy would get it the day before Con[ventio]n. [70]

I regret now having sent the additional reminiscences I did to Mrs. Gage some time last spring with a portion of the Aug. no. [of The National Citizen and Ballot Box] (containing my Kansas chapter) [71] I have no other Aug. no. ('79) but if I had that -- (what I sent her) returned I could put it in the shape you suggest & add & improve greatly to my satisfaction. If you will return it at once I will bless you. Meantime I will be preparing further items. But I work slowly being limited to a small portion of the day & often interrupted by physical discomfort. Besides I write in a horizontal position which is never pleasant & often distracts my mind. It is a blessing to have "a call" to good work. It makes me forget my helplessness in pleasant memories & glorious apprehensions of the coming days.

It will be easy I should think -- natural that is -- to divide your work by the [Civil] war. I should close the vol. (1) with the war -- that is commence vol. 2 with the commencement of active, organized work for suffrage. It is not my province to advise, but from my standpoint it seems most rational to give a special department to reminiscences, and let the public events as appeals to legis[lature]s, conventions & in detail maintain the historical integrity of the work. I have nothing but a general recollection of events to suggest from so don't feel very wise in my plan.

Only think Susan -- It was the 2d Worcester Con[ventio]n [1851] at which I spoke in public. I was there at the first but except the persons present which were the same (leading ones) and their sayings I can recall nothing of the place, the framing in of it as a separate body or place and I had always dated it 1850 as I find it in a later printed report. I wonder nobody else has noticed it. I don't recollect seeing Lucy till in the Con[ventio]n at which I spoke. I think that must have been her first appearance there. I was in full sympathy with the friends but have a faint recollection of keeping [in] my room the afternoon session of the day being prostrated & unable to keep up. Of my journey home I have no rem[em]brance. I don't know how I have so forgotten, only that like many of my experiences it was crowded from my tho'ts by absorbing cases and events that buried and built over it other and more permanent memorials to humanity. I would give O so much if I had recorded every noteworthy incident as I went along, but till results showed their value they look of no account.

I rejoiced in my heart of hearts, on that memorable occasion, that I could help to inaugurate the "fuss" that would thenceforth justify every man disposed to relieve us from legalized oppression; -- not only justify but force men for their honor's sake to let oppressed woman help make the laws by which she and her children are governed.

And now thirty years later, so great has the "fuss" become, that neither liquor rings, nor political rings, nor marriage rings, nor ecclesiastical rings, can ring the new era in woman's life out, and the old era in again. Both men and women have outgrown the social, industrial and political menages of thirty years ago. The leaders of the Suffrage movement may all die, -- two to one will spring from the ranks and bear aloft the glorious banner of a free womanhood. Differences as to ways & means, will, now & then, as in all human associations, agitate the surface of affairs, but the deep, underlying love of humanity for humanity's sake, which is the life and sinew of our cause, will restore the disturbed equilibrium. Only for the dignity of our cause and our own self-respect, let us ignore all petty grievances and personal criticisms that belong on a plane beneath the grand and self-forgetful level of our work, and to which we cannot "Come down" without belittleing [sic] ourselves and our influence in its behalf. More I am unable from physical weakness to say or to say well what I have attempted &c.

Thank Mrs. Gage for her good letter. I can see her now in her home which is always pleasant when thinking of distant friends. Your pleasant reunion in Tenafly [New Jersey] -- how nice it must be just the retreat that would be medicine to me -- work, sympathy in a common purpose & loving it for life, dear life! You must remember that all my life I have been separated from my peers in the work, only meeting them in a few Conv[entio]ns & at odd times during the first 4 yrs, from '50 to '54, till '59 in Kansas a few times in the Wattles family. I have longed to live by women whose whole souls were in the work, instead of their leisure time & unused scraps of heart! What has become of Mr. [Henry B.] Stanton? [72] I have seen no mention of him in many years. Love to Mrs. Stanton & pray excusing scrappy letter. I am feeling a little better than a few weeks ago.

Yours lovingly,

C. I. H. NICHOLS

I concluded to copy the paragraph of Lucy's letter referred to as follows -- "I wish you would write a private friendly letter to the Nat[ional] Citizen & [Ballot] Box & beg them not to justify buying votes &c. It is pitiful to think the first thing women do when they get power is to resort to such unscrupulous means."

The loose half sheet from my letter to Con[ventio]n has an explanation in the upper margin of the term "fuss" used by me. Uncle [Peter R.] Taft was a member of the Legis[lature] & proposed to change the obnoxious laws unbacked by petition of any woman & before any woman had peeped "woman's rights." "It will be time enough to change the laws when the women make a 'fuss.'" Reply of Vt. Legislators to my uncle when he proposed the change of laws "widow wife" &c. in the session of 1830.

[TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY] [73]
POMO [CALIFORNIA]
Dec. 17th 1880

Dear old Friend --

Your rec[eive]d asking for Photo &c. [74] I wrote to A. O. [Carpenter] to send me a copy of the daguerreotype at once, also a photo of the negative he has of it for I have not seen it [in] 15 yrs & want to decide for myself which is best. A[urelius]. likes his "workup" negative best of any at hand. Geo[rge] says the lips are niggery that I never had such thick lips & as the negative was taken of the daugerre[otyp]e when A. hadn't seen me for 15 yrs it is very possible that his memory endowed me with an extra kissing apparatus.

Geo[rge] has a cabinet size daguerreotype [with] the face smaller than the present cab[inet] sizes in consequence of more figure and hands holding knitting work -- a picture which all my family friends call my best because of its truthfulness to the home look. It is like pulling eye teeth to get it, but Geo says he had rather lose it than have the thick lipped picture go into the History. When A. sends me the photo from the original (daguerreotype) I can tell which I like best, & I will send them all to you. I only fear the engraver will find it easier to copy a photo & prefer the poorer likeness. But I trust you to see to that.

I confess to being very sensitive to the sensation my face -- when at rest -- generally creates. I never desired beauty but al[ways] lamented that I was not handsome enough to disarm the prejudices it was my mission to combat & read so plainly when sitting silent before my audiences. How I used to tumble & my heart sink under the personal scrutiny of a curious audience! I would like my picture to strike the reader as a womanly, motherly body; that would suggest nothing like the wooden face my pictures generally present. I rec[eive]d a letter from Mrs. Grey asking for a specification of the laws & bills or clauses of bills in behalf of women which I procured or caused to be adopted &c. -- which I tho't of most value &c. &c. I think Judge A[dams]. [75] must have got her to ask them as I have rec[eive]d no letter yet from him on the subject.

You will see what a botch I have made of the payments I send of reminis[cen]ces. I cut up and rearrange & left out & added to the copy in the Aug '79 no. of Citizen & sent to Mrs. Gage. I hope she has forward it to you. I have not written her about it. I felt so miserable -- left that for you. If you will send me proof of it when in shape [so] I can see if [it is] all right. There [are] some mistakes in the printed copy I returned to her which were important -- as names of Con[ventio]n Committee. The errors are so tiffling in the inclosed copy that I send it as it is. You will of course have a perfect copy to supply the wornplaces &c

I have 4 or 5 pages (of this paper) to send in a few days -- detailing briefly another child rescue effected in Quindaro for which I with Rev. [S. D.] Storrs & wife & 6 others were arrested & tried. I had been to the Territorial Leg[islatur]e & got divorce & right of custody for the mother [Lydia W. Peck] to produce on the trial [76] & so worsted [Charles S.] Glick. [77] This demo[crati]c clique who bo[a]sted they booked all the philanthrophy of Q[uindaro] for the Penitentiary. You must let me know if you have enough reminiscences or if more will be too late. I write in bed & it is a stormy, suffering day. My general condition is quite as comfortable as at any time since my illness.

[C. I. H. NICHOLS]

[TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY] [78]
[POMO, CALIFORNIA]
Dec. 22, 1880

Dear Susan

I omitted one topic in my last expecting before this to have sent another package for which I wanted an Aug. '79 no. of the [National] Citizen. I thought I could get of a subscriber in the town, but it had been sent on a mission. So I write to say that I want to suppress my mention of Judge [Samuel A.] Kingman's opposition. [79] I had been feeling uncomfortable about it as I recollected him as the only opponent named individually & tho' his sarcastic humor was the concentrated influence that counted most for the opposition then, he, it seems, has progressed and I feel is entitled to the forbearance which age & much good service for the State & society, and above all, womanly consideration for an opponent shorn of power -- entitle him. I can change the paragraph with little trouble to the printer when I get the proof.

But lest I should not live to correct it myself, I write to ask you to see that Judge Kingman's name is left out in the mention of the opposition as "leading" it & again as a "bitter opponent." I do not remember whether the expressions are in the same or separate paragraphs. A letter from Judge [Franklin C.] Adams on this point came to hand last mail. I am no spiritualist but here as in many instances in my life my mind has been haunted by some fact, feeling, or incident -- and lo! an expression of similar feelings have come to me penned about the same time from some friend interested in me or the subject upon which both were impressed. It is stormy & has been for a week & I suffer as I always do on such occasions. Will get the pictures to you soon as sunshine helps A. O. [Carpenter] to take copy -- which I will put up with the daguerreotype --

In great haste & much love
C. I. H. NICHOLS

[DIARY EXTRACT] [80] [1880]

I look back thru the long years -- all their worries and apprehensions of evil to come -- and see that for all that has happened of trial, privation, and bereavement I have lived on without loss of the materials and capacity for as much rational, solid enjoyment as would have made earth a preliminary heaven. The fearful looking for trouble has been the greatest trouble after all. I of course except the sorrow which knows no panacea but time & resignation -- loss of friends. So now try dear friends and remember that yesterday's lesson is one of comfort for today and make today a "weather-breeder" for heavenly showers tomorrow. Enjoy the present moment by doing the present duty cheerfully and hopefully -- In so doing is your best preparation for an enjoyable future. Trust me -- I have proved it.

[C. I. H. NICHOLS]

[DIARY EXTRACT] [81]

EARLY REMINISCENCES OF MY LIFE, WRITTEN IN HER INVALID HOURS
BY -- CLARINA I. H. NICHOLS, 1880.

I deeply regret that I have never kept a Diary, or rather a record of the incidents and events that have given interest to my life, directed my efforts, trained my abilities, disciplined and broadened my sympathies and developed my character. The uses of such a record are so apparent to me in the retrospect, that I wonder while I regret, that the consciousness of such influences was wanting until their efforts had become crystalized in habits of thought and methods of actions. What a book I might have given to my dear children, relatives and personal friends! What a legacy of instructive and entertaining experiences my long and eventful life would be to the thoughtful student of human nature!

Why have I written these pages? Why rather did I not commence earlier and write more? Why have I not gathered more button-hole boquets [sic] from among the butter-cups and daisies carpeting my pathway? Why not have [I] gathered to my cabinet the acorn that nestled under the green moss and decaying leaves that thrust its rootlets into the rich earth, and grown to a perfect tree, lifts its proud, glorious head and extends its branches into the glowing present, laden with memorials of the past and armed with stencils of the future? Aye why?

The consciousness of their value -- the knowledge of their relations to the grand harvests of perfected aims, came only with late experiences, in the brief leisure of an ever busy life. Unconsciousness of their value! Aye, therein is the secret. Some of the most instructive lessons recalled by memory are the utterances of an old woman, an every day Christian, whose very pounding barrel was a reproof to all uprighteousness, as it was a professional exorciser of all uncleanness.

From earliest recollection my sympathies have been identified with all living creatures. The needs, the wrongs, the rights of the insignificant and unlovely, had a stronger claim than wealth, position or personal immunity, upon my companionship. Even ugliness of temper so modified my contempt with pity, that I could not hold or give way to anger when the innocent victim, which I sometimes chanced to be, of its outbreaks. And as I distinctly remember, this trait of my temper (its control) often made my childish antagonists more furious.

My temperament was quick to respond; generous and impulsive to a fault, and reckless of every thing but the possible injury of the feelings of others in the pursuit of fun and frolic. I often repented results which had I paused to reflect, would have deterred me from acting, and then the whole world was as nothing to comfort me; my cloud had no "silver lining." I was naturally unsuspicious, though quick to scent and follow a genuine trail. And with a temper that cooled before it reached anvil heat, I harbored no revenges; but the cool after-thought of a wrong word or act, filled me with sorrow, and I early adopted a rule of apologizing, or rather of asking to be forgiven. This cause and the habit of self-control in the expression of angry and outrageous feelings, I think was initiated and fostered by the relations formed with a Christian Church (the Baptist) of which I became a member at eight years of age. And it is a noticeable fact that the doctrines which were beyond my comprehension then, as predestination, justification, a vicarious atonement, the trinity and eternal punishment except the sinning be eternal also -- have remained incomprehensible, while the love which conquers sin and death, and insures heaven here and eternal life, were and are a living faith.

As I look back upon my early self as if it were the companion and not the unfolding germ of the woman of three score and ten who writes these lines, I see so clearly how external influences gathered up the ribbons of leading characteristics and guided where they did not drive, in the career which I call life, that I the more deeply regret the not having made a record of many incidents which had an almost controlling, though at the time unsuspected influence, on the whole future of my eventful life. . . .

My earliest recollection of myself, is a child of two years led by my Grandfather [Levi] Howard [82] through the leather shop in search of a piece suitable for the seat of a little kitchen chair frames which he carried in his disengaged hand, and which, being a present to myself, was a possession to be remembered through life.

My next recollection, and which must have been of a later date as I remember myself sitting in the little chair, was the rocking of my baby brother (Aurelius Chapin) two years and two months younger than myself. The fact which fixed this service in my memory, was the being dressed in a new short over-dress of red and blue domestic woolen plaid, in which I was to "be a little woman and rock the baby and let mamma wash."

My next recollection is of removing to a new home at the upper end of the little village (West Townshend), my mother, myself, and father with the baby in his arms, walking behind an ox-cart laden with bureaus, chairs and bedding.

The most vivid scene in my early recollections is the smoking ruins of the house and adjoining buildings from which we had removed only a few weeks before; I, standing in the early morning, with my little hand in my mother's at the head of the hill in the road overlooking the desolate scene -- the work of an incendiary. The date of this fire fixes my age at that time at two and one half years.

My next recollections are of my school and home life in my fifth and sixth year. I was taken to school at three years of age by Kilborn Church, the teacher of the winter School, while boarding his week at my father's: he held me in his lap and gave me his pen-knife to play with. I made a deep cut in my thumb; the nail came off at last and was replaced by a slightly split nail -- a life-time memorial of my first day at the district school. The next summer Maria Cushing, a sweet motherly girl of twelve years, a neighbor's daughter, led me every day to school and cared for me faithfully, returning me at night to the home which I liked much better, for I was too active to sit still six hours of the day as school children were then required to do. In proof of my early dullness in the book line, I have a distinct recollection of being coerced into spelling "cider" from Webster's spelling book by a sound whipping from my exasperated mother. But cider -- conquered, I took to learning like a duck to water.

During my fifth and sixth years, I was persecuted with matrimonial offers from two friends and frequent visitors at my father's -- a student at law, and the Deputy Sheriff of the County -- who amused themselves by bidding against each other for my favor. In going to and from school, I had to pass the law office and the village store opposite, in one or the other of which, they were so sure to be, that I used to send my little brother, who could not run fast -- past them first, and then run past them myself for dear life, as they often intercepted and bore me back in triumph -- it being fun for them to call out my objections to a matrimonial union on the one hand, and my estimate of their individual and comparative merits on the other. My recollections of some of my expressed views on these occasions could not be very much improved by later experiences, and go far to excuse the interest of the young bachelors in the enforced discussion of so serious a subject.

On the last occasion of the kind which I remember, when I had safely run the gauntlet of my fears, I was suddenly caught up from behind and carried back to the store where my tears of mingled grief and indignation quickly conquered the really kind-hearted culprit and secured a permanent peace, sealed by a kiss of forgiveness on my part, and a bountiful supply of raisins (I had never seen a sugar plum then) on his. The double courtship soon after met with an irreconcilable obstacle. I utterly refused to leave my mother. Having confided to her, that I liked the lawyer best, and concluded that we might as well be married right away and keep house in the "spare chamber," she gravely informed me, that "when girls married they could not stay with their mothers but had to go to their husband's homes" -- With my arms about her neck and in a flood of tears, I solemnly abjured matrimony forever. And from that time I would answer no matrimonial propositions, but accepted the raisins.

Five years later, when I was in my tenth year, Timothy Phelps (brother of our neighbor, Judge Cha[rle]s Phelps) [83] died in New Orleans, where he had lived some three years; and I dropped tears of tender regret, as for a widowed Love. Though I had outgrown my childish part in the vexing flirtation, and estimated the attentions of the parties in their true light, I have learned from the incident, that children of tender years have sensibilities which should be respected; and a sensitive self-respect, which may suffer from the consciousness of being subjected to the trifling of their elders, especially of those they naturally like and look up to for truth and fairness of treatment.

Notes

JOSEPH G. GAMBONE is a member of the manuscript and archives staff of the Kansas State Historical Society. He wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Vivian Bryan, Vermont State Library at Montpelier, T. D. Seymour Bassett, University of Vermont at Burlington, and Eva J. Leech, Brooks Memorial Library at Brattleboro, Vt., for their assistance in gathering these papers.

1. Wyandotte Gazette, March 28, 1873.
2. Mrs. Nichols refers here to Mrs. Jarley, an English showwoman, whore exhibit of wax figures was brought to Wyandotte in early February, 1873. For additional information, see ibid., January 31, February 7, 1873. No biographical information has been located on Mrs. Jarley.
3. Mrs. Nichols refers here to Cora M. Downs, a Wyandotte resident, who impersonated Mrs. Jarley during an entertainment program in Wyandotte in honor of the wax figure exhibit. For a newspaper account of the festivities, see ibid., February 14, 1873. In 1881 Mrs. Downs was appointed the first woman regent of the University of Kansas. No additional biographical information has been located.
4. Mrs. Nichols refers here to the senatorial bribery scandal of 1873. Alexander M. York, a lawyer, ex-lieutenant colonel of the Union army, and state senator from Montgomery county, was apparently a pawn in a well-organized political scheme to defame the character of Samuel C. Pomeroy and to deny his reelection to the U. S. senate. Although the York scandal caused Pomeroy's downfall, many questions surrounding this episode remain unanswered and await further investigation. For a dramatic account of the "York scandal," see Albert A. Kitzhaber, "G?tterdammerung in Topeka: The Downfall of Senator Pomeroy," KHQ, v. 18 (August, 1959), pp. 243-278. For a scholarly reevaluation of this political chicanery, see James C. Malin, "Some Reconsiderations of the Defeat of Senator Pomeroy of Kansas, 1873," Mid-America, Chicago, v. 48 (January, 1988), pp. 47-57.
5. Wyandotte Gazette, March 5, 1875.
6. No biographical information has been found on Dr. Rushford.
7. For the text of the California "descent and distribution" laws, see The Statutes of California, 1849-1850, pp. 219-221; ibid., 1862, pp. 569-570.
8. For the text of the California homestead laws, see ibid., 1860, pp. 311-313; ibid., 1862, pp. 519-520; ibid., 1867-1868, pp. 116-117.
9. For the text of the California "sole trader" law, see ibid., 1862, pp. 108-109.
10. For the text of the California married woman's legislation, see ibid., 1850, pp. 254-255; ibid., 1853, p. 165; ibid., 1855, pp. 12-13; ibid., 1857, p. 199; ibid., 1858, pp. 22-23; ibid., 1862, p. 518; ibid., 1863-1864, p. 363; ibid., 1865-1866, pp. 316-317, 758-759; ibid., 1869-1870, pp. 226-227.
11. For the text of the California divorce laws, see ibid., 1851, pp. 186-187; ibid., 1853, p. 70; ibid., 1869-1870, p. 291.
12. For the text of the California "estates of deceased" law, see ibid., 1851, pp. 448-489; ibid., 1861, 628-655; ibid., 1863-1864, pp. 367-375.
13. For the text of the California education laws, see ibid., 1873-1874, pp. 356, 938. Also, see Mary F. Snow to the editors, San Francisco, March 7, 1874, cited in The Woman's Journal, March 14, 1874.
14. The Ballot Box, Toledo, August, 1876. Mrs. Nichols's letter was published in HWS, v. 3, pp. 48-50. Originally written to be presented at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia on July 4, 1876, her letter was read by Miss Anthony before the National Women Suffrage convention at Philadelphia on July 19, 1876. For additional information, see Flexnor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, pp. 170-172; Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, v. 1, p. 475; HWS, v. 3, pp. 44-45.
In a letter to Mrs. Nichols following the July convention, Miss Anthony wrote: "The Kansas women say, 'All we have of freedom we owe to Mrs. Nichols and yet we never have given her a testimonial.' Well, you and I and all who labor to make the conditions of the world better for coming generations, we find our testimonials in the good accomplished through our work." -- Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, v. 1, p. 480.
15. The Ballot Box, July, 1877. Mrs. Nichols's letter was read at the National Woman Suffrage convention held in New York on May 24-25, 1877. For the proceedings of the convention see New York Daily Times, May 25-26, 1877. For additional information, see HWS, v. 3, pp. 68-69.
16. Frederick Douglass, noted black abolitionist, was a zealous supporter of woman's suffrage. Throughout his life he agitated for civil rights for both freedmen and women. For an excellent study of Douglass and woman's rights, see Benjamin Quarles, "Frederick Douglass and the Woman's Rights Movement," Journal of Negro History, Washington, v. 25 (January, 1940), pp. 35-44. For additional biographical information, see Quarles, Frederick Douglass (New York, Atheneum Publishers, 1968); Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass (New York, International Publishers Co., Inc., 1964); August Meier, "Frederick Douglass' Vision for America: A Case Study in Nineteenth Century Negro Protest," in Harold M. Hyman and Leonard W. Levy, ed's., Freedom and Reform: Essays in Honor of Henry Steele Commager (New York, Harper & Row, 1967); Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (New York, Pathway Press, 1941).
17. Mrs. Nichols refers here to the first woman's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, N. Y. in July, 1848. For additional information on the Seneca Falls convention, see Flexnor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, pp. 71-77; Kraditor, Up From the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism, pp. 183-188.
18. Aaron A. Sargent was elected to the U. S. senate in 1872 and served only one term. He believed heartily in woman's rights and had announced during his senatorial campaign his endorsement of woman suffrage. For additional biographical information, see DAB, v. 16, pp. 353-354; Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress, 1774-1948, pp. 1777-1778; Lutz, Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian, pp. 191, 230, 232. For the complete text of Sargent's remarks on woman's suffrage, see U. S. Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 2d Sess., v. 5, p. 762.
19. The Woman's Journal, July 28, 1877.
20. For the notice on the repeal of the California education law, see ibid., May 26, 1877. In regard to the reported actions of the California legislature, the editor of the Journal asserted: "Woman is, and always will be, the shuttle-cock of petitioners, till she votes."
21. Ezra S. Carr was superintendent of public instruction from 1875 until 1879. No additional biographical information has been located.
22. For the text of the California compulsory education act, see The Statues of California, 1873-1874, pp. 751-753.
23. An examination of The Statues of California failed to locate the "wife-whipping" law.
24. The Woman's Journal, August 4, 1877. The editor of the Journal wrote that Mrs. Nichols was "one of the earliest and ablest advocates of Woman Suffrage in America" and that she had written "a most convincing argument for the admission of Woman to the Christian ministry."
25. For the article by "M. E. W. S.," see ibid., April 21, 1877. For additional newspaper commentary on women and the ministry, see ibid., June 9, 1877.
26. Mrs. Nichols refers here to the Rev. James Monroe Buckley and his second wife, Sarah Isabella. Buckley was a Methodist minister who edited the Christian Advocate, one of the best-known religious journals in the country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For additional biographical information, see DAB, v. 3, pp. 231-232; New York Daily Times, February 9, 1920.
27. No biographical information has been found on the Rev. Hurlburt.
28. The Journal noted that Mrs. Nichols's letter would be continued. However, a thorough search of the Journal failed to locate the continuation of the letter. Apparently it was never published or the Journal was in error in its notation.
29. The National Citizen and Ballot Box, Syracuse, August, 1878. Mrs. Nichols's letter was read before the National Woman Suffrage Association convention held in Rochester, N. Y., on July 19, 1878, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the first woman rights convention held at Seneca Falls. Only the following extract of her letter has been found. For additional information on the Rochester convention, see HWS, v. 3, pp. 117-127.
30. The National Citizen and Ballot Box, July, 1879. Mrs. Nichols's letter was presented at the National Woman Suffrage Association convention held in St. Louis on May 7-9, 1879. For the Proceedings of the St. Louis convention, see St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 9-10, 1879. For additional information, see HWS, v. 3, pp. 142-149.
Virginia Louisa Minor, president of the St. Louis branch of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was the first woman in Missouri to publicly support the enfranchisement of both Negroes and women. For additional biographical information, see NAW, v. 2, pp. 550-551; Monia Cook Morris, "The History of Woman Suffrage in Missouri, 1867-1901," Missouri Historical Review, v. 25 (October, 1930), pp. 69-82.
31. The resolution read: "That the great principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment heretofore exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church." -- HWS, v. 3, p. 124.
32. No biographical information has been found on the Rev. Mr. Ijams.
33. Robert G. Ingersoll, known to his contemporaries as "the great agnostic," attacked the tradition of free-thinking theological rationalism. For a biographical sketch, see DAB, v. 9, pp. 469-470.
34. The Woman's Journal, July 5, 1879.
35. For the text of Mrs. Bowles communication, which was originally published in the Boston Evening Transcript, see ibid., March 15, 1879. For a additional communications on the Chinese in California by Mrs. Bowles, see Bowles to the editor, San Francisco, March, 1879, cited in ibid., April 5, 12, 19, 1879. No biographical information has been found on Mrs. Bowles.
36. Ibid., August 16, 1879.
37. Ibid., September 28, 1879. The New Hampshire legislation allowing women to vote at school meetings became law in 1878. For the text of the law, see The General Laws of the State of New Hampshire, 1876, p, 176.
38. Mrs. Nichols attended the territorial legislature of 1860 and secured the passage of a law allowing married women to sue or to be sued independently of their husbands. However, Kansas was not admitted into the Union until January, 1861, and the first state legislature did not convene until March, 1861.
39. The Rev. Werter R. Davis, a Methodist minister from Ohio, was chaplain of the Wyandotte constitutional convention and the first president of Baker University. For additional biographical information, see "Biographies of Members of the Legislature of 1861," p. 246; Speer, "Patriotism and Education in the Methodist Church," p. 499.
40. Mrs. Nichols refers here to Samuel A. Kingman.
41. John J. Ingalls was elected to the U. S. senate in the aftermath of the York scandal in 1873. For additional biographical information, see Burton J. Williams, Senator John James Ingalls: Kansas' Iridescent Republican (Lawrence, The University of Kansas Press, 1972).
42. Mary A. Livermore was editor of The Agitator, a woman's suffrage newspaper which later merged with The Woman's Journal. She was president of the American Woman Suffrage Association from 1875 to 1878. For additional biographical information, see NAW, v. 2, pp. 411-413.
43. For an account of the East Boston meeting to consider the Massachusetts law enabling women to vote for school committee, see Boston Journal, cited in The Woman's Journal, July 5, 1879. For the text of the Massachusetts law, see Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Court of Massachusetts, 1879, pp, 559-560.
44. The National Citizen and Ballot Box, February, 1880. Mrs. Nichols's letter was read at the National Woman Suffrage Association convention held at Washington, D. C., on January 21-22, 1880. For the proceedings of the convention, see ibid., February, 1880; The Evening Star, January 21-23, 1880.
45. For an analysis of the woman's suffrage movement during the 1870's, see Flexnor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, pp. 164-178.
46. Mrs. Nichols refers here to the Oregon land donation act of 1850 which gave a married woman the right to hold her share (or 320 acres) of land as her own separate realty. For the complete text of the 1850 law, see U. S. Statutes at Large, v. 9, pp. 496-500.
47. For the text of the homestead act of 1862, see U. S. Statutes at Large, v. 12, p. 392. For additional information, see Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1942), p. 207.
48. In regard to Mrs. Nichols's letter, the editor of The National Citizen and Ballot Box wrote: "We are often told that woman's place is home. But where has she a home? If married, and her husband dies without a will, leaving it to her, she has but the use of one-third of the real estate and is obliged to pay rent on the home to her husband's heirs (in most cases her own children) after the expiration of forty days. Then as Mrs. Nichols's letter shows, Congress debars a married woman from preempting a home on the Nation's lands, not even permitting her to take out letters patent jointly with her husband in securing such home.
The injustice and inconsistency of the laws in regard to women, would be comical, were they not so dastardly and unjust. -- Ibid.
49. Ibid., April, 1880. This woman's suffrage journal as edited by Matilda Joslyn Gage, an avid woman's rights advocate who coauthored with Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony the first three volumes of the monumental History of Woman Suffrage. For additional biographical information, see NAW, v. 2, pp. 4-6.
50. Mrs. Nichols refers here to the following inscription written on a placard at the Washington convention: "Women are voting on education, the bulwark of the republic, in Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts." -- The National Citizen and Ballot Box, February, 1880.
51. In her editorial response, Mrs. Gage wrote: "I agree with Mrs. Nichols, and am myself very careful not to make a statement of this kind without knowing the facts." In regard to the proposed woman's school voting bill in California, Mrs. Gage wrote that it was received by the legislature with "ridicule, misrepresentation, burlesque amendments and burlesque speechmaking." -- Ibid., April, 1880.
52. Ibid. The entire text of Mrs. Nichols's letter was not published.
53. Phoebe Larkin, a young woman living in Wyoming territory, had made a declaratory statement on a preemption claim. She later married and "under her new name proved up her preemption claim and paid her money" without receiving title to her property. According to the editor of The National Citizen and Ballot Box, the "General or Government Land Office has decided that, although her money was regularly paid and regularly received, she cannot now have her land, because she is a married woman." The editor concluded: "This is not even the most thievish, iniquitous phase of the affair, as the Land Office has decided that not only is she to be deprived of her land, but that her money cannot be refunded to her unless Congress shall pass a special bill for her relief." -- Ibid.
54. For the text of the editorial on the Larkin preemption case, see New North West, Portland [February, 1880], cited in The Woman's Journal, February 28, 1880. In concluding his report on the Larkin case, the editor of the New North West wrote: "Do men expect the growing intelligence of women to hold its peace and be content while wrongs like Phoebe Larkin's are the direct result of a man-made law that taxes them without representation and governs them without consent?"
55. Following Mrs. Nichols's letter, the editor of The National Citizen and Ballot Box asserted: "Let every woman remember that the government legally robs woman of a home, -- legally robs her of the improvements she has made upon it -- legally robs her of the money she has paid for it, and refuses to return either -- if she commits the crime of matrimony -- and this is the security the government throws around a woman when she tries to gain a home." -- The National Citizen and Ballot Box, April, 1880.
56. Ibid., July, 1880. Mrs. Nichols's letter was read at the National Woman Suffrage Association convention held in Indianapolis on May 25-26, 1880. The entire text of her letter was not published. For the proceedings of the Indianapolis convention, see ibid., June and July, 1880.
57. The Woman's Journal, August 7, 1880.
58. No biographical information bas been located on Mrs. Sampson.
59. Ibid., November 6, 1880. Mrs. Nichols's letter was read at the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association convention held in Worcester on October 20, 1880. The convention commemorated the 30th anniversary meeting of the first woman's rights convention held in Massachusetts. For the proceedings of the Worcester convention, see ibid., October 30, 1880.
60. AL in "Susan H. Anthony Papers," Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
61. Miss Anthony was executive vice-president-at-large of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1880.
62. Miss Anthony's mother died in the spring of 1880.
63. James A. Garfield, U. S. congressman from Ohio, was the Republican party's Presidential candidate in 1880. For additional biographical information, see R. G. Caldwell, James A. Garfield, Party Chieftain (New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1934); Theodore C. Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield (2 vols., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1915); DAB, v. 7, pp. 145-150.
64. Ellen Sophie Cobb was born in Townshend, Vt., on June 14, 1822. She later married Roswell Lyman Cobb. No additional biographical information has been located.
65. Lewis Cass, U. S. senator from Michigan, was the unsuccessful Democratic Presidential candidate in 1848. He later served as secretary of state in the Buchanan administration. For additional biographical information, see Frank B. Woodford, Lewis Cass, the Last Jeffersonian (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1950); Andrew C. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891).
66. A thorough search of The Woman's Journal for 1880 failed to locate an article on "vote buying" written by "Betty."
67. ALS in "Susan B. Anthony Papers," Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
68. The first volume of the History of Woman Suffrage was published in 1881.
69. An examination of the "Anthony Papers" failed to produce Miss Stone's letter to Mrs. Nichols.
70. Mrs. Nichols refers here to her letter to the 1880 Worcester convention.
71. Mrs. Nichols's reminiscences were published originally in the July and August, 1879, issues of The National Citizen and Ballot Box.
72. Henry B. Stanton, journalist and abolitionist, married Elizabeth Cady, daughter of Judge Daniel Cady of Johnstown, N. Y., in May, 1840. In 1855 he helped to organize the Republican party in New York and remained in the party's fold until the Grant administration when he joined the Democrats. He was associated with the New York Tribune during the editorship of Greeley and was later connected with the New York Sun until his death in 1887. For additional biographical information, see DAB, v. 17, pp. 524-525; Lutz, Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902, passim.
73. AL in "Susan B. Anthony Paper," Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
74. Apparently Miss Anthony asked Mrs. Nichols for a photograph to be published with her reminiscences in the History of Woman Suffrage. For the engraving of Mrs. Nichols, see HWS, v. 1, facing p. 193.
75. Ms. Nichols refers here to Franklin G. Adams, secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society from 1876 until his death in 1899. He migrated to Kansas in 1855 and became actively involved in territorial politics. He was an ardent supporter of early temperance legislation and a firm believer in woman's equality. In 1867 he assisted the Kansas woman's suffrage movement. For additional biographical information, see "Biographical Sketch of Franklin G. Adams," KHC, v. 6 (1897-1900), pp. 171-175.
76. For additional information on the Peck kidnapping and divorce case, see Gambone, "The Forgotten Feminist of Kansas: The Papers of Clarina I. H. Nichols, 1854-1885," KHQ, v. 39 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 422-429.
77. Charles S. Glick was an attorney in Wyandotte. No additional biographical information has been found.
78. ALS in "Susan B. Anthony Papers," Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
79. For Mrs. Nichols's commentary on Kingman, see HWS, v. 1, pp. 192-194.
80. Autograph essay from the "Nichols Diary" in the private collection of Mrs. Rabinovitz.
81. Ibid.
82. Mrs. Nichols's paternal grandfather, Levi Haywood (the name was changed to Howard), was a native of Massachusetts who bought land in Townshend, Vt., in 1775.
83. No biographical information has been found on either Timothy Phelps or his father, Charles Phelps.

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